Oh, The Places We Have Been: Rediscovering the Past is a continuation of the gallery’s tenth anniversary celebration and highlights a diverse group of artists who have been integral to our programming since our doors opened in 2005.

Masakatsu Sashie, Toadstool

Four Works by Jim Houser

We always get nostalgic at LeVine’s group shows, having discovered so much excellent art and had so much fun at their events over the years.

Left to Right: Marco Mazzoni, Olek, Sam Gibbons

Victor Castillo, Point of Entry

Over the last decade Jonathan LeVine Gallery has exhibited over 300 artists. This exhibition pays tribute to the new and familiar faces we have seen along the way and showcases some significant works from our archives. Oh, The Places We Have Been is a retrospective of JLG’s past with an eye toward the future.

Andrew Brandou, Black Swan

Oh, The Places We Have Been: Rediscovering the Past Group Exhibition will be on View Through May 2nd, 2015, at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, Located at 557C West 23rd Street, in the Chelsea Gallery District.

Cheim & Read is currently hosting an exhibition of new work by Barry McGee, which is the McGee’s first solo show with the gallery and his first show in New York in eight years. McGee is arguably among the most well-known and influential artists from the San Francisco Bay Area to have international success. His boldly graphic, colorful work incorporates a multitude of influences (including graffiti, American folk art and Op Art), but especially the urban street culture he knows well.

Translating the city’s unique vernacular into artistic imagery, McGee celebrates the diversity, distinctive characters and neighborhood communities of the inner-city. His work critiques consumerist culture and the constant backdrop of commercialism in everyday interactions; rejecting the billboard and chain store, McGee instead finds inspiration in the seeming randomness of graffiti, the endless uploading of images on the internet, and the creative styling of misfits. McGee’s work succeeds in its sensitive balance between anarchy and collaboration, resulting in environments which immerse the viewer in his singular, yet inclusive, vision.

The multi-image, whimsical commercial style of his work reminded me every much of artworks by Jim Houser and also Rebus Puzzle artist Stephen Powers.

Drawings, paintings and sculptures are treated equally; echoing his anti-establishment sensibility, McGee refuses hierarchies of material or subject matter. His recent work is comprised of flat-surfaced, brightly-colored geometric motifs, serial images and caricatures of cartoon-like characters, and recurring monikers, like the pseudonym “L. Fong,” and the acronyms “THR” (The Human Race or The Harsh Reality) and “DFW” (Down for Whatever).

Click on Image to Enlarge for Detail

Interspersed among the abstract panels (which sometimes expand along bulbous walls and around corners en masse), the images and words provide an enigmatic but individualized narrative in an otherwise vibrating, tile-like field of intense pattern.

Visually stimulating, perceptive, and seeming to channel the various rhythmic beats of urban culture, McGee’s work addresses issues of identity, mark-making, authorship and autonomy within the bustling, constantly changing tableau of city life.

This is one of my favorite new exhibits of the season. Don’t miss it!

Barry McGee will be on Exhibit through October 26th, 2013 at Cheim & Read, located at 547 West 25th Street, NYC, in the Chelsea Gallery District.

I’m a little bit late to the party writing about this very cool exhibit, due to being busy doing other equally cool things. That said, you have until June 15th to make it to the Jonathan LeVine Gallery to see the Souvenirs solo exhibit from Portland-based artist Souther Salazar.

Souvenirs includes a series of new paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations, and it is very fun and totally family friendly. His art reminds me a bit of artist Jim Houser, whose work I also saw at LeVine very recently; in May of this year.

Here’s a little bit of backstory on the inspiration for Souvenirs:

Works in Souvenirs were inspired by The Trading Tortoise, Salazar’s recent collaboration with his wife, Monica Choy. In 2012, the pair created an interactive art installation in the form of a tortoise-shaped trading post, which they took on tour, bartering unique objects and stories at locations in over 30 different cities across the country.

During their travels, the artists explored America, exchanging tiny treasures and sharing adventures along the way. This unique community-oriented experience, which connected a diverse group of people through a network of trades, is documented on Trading Tortoise Dot Com.

During Trading Tortoise, Salazar explored the connection between personal memories and collected objects, items that serve as tangible reminders of places, people and events. Organizing his memories of the project into imaginary collections, Salazar created artworks to represent his own visual souvenirs, referencing some of the experiences.

Drawings of trucks, gas pumps and power lines take on anthropomorphic qualities while a series of small sculptures constructed from found objects are presented in curio-like shadow boxes—one contains a series of miniature water towers in varying shapes and sizes, and the other features a group of figures representing some of the people Salazar met, the things they traded and their relationships to those objects.

Tiny Water Towers Made from Found Objects

Souvenirs By Souther Salazar will be on Exhibit Only through June 15th, 2013 at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, Located at 529 West 20th Street, 9th Floor, in the Chelsea Gallery District.

Part two of Saturday night’s opening receptions at Jonathan LeVine Gallery (because there are always two) was a fun little exhibit called Search Party by Philadelphia-based artist Jim Houser. Search Party, the artist’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, includes a series of eight new works and a site-specific installation. Some of Houser’s work reminded me very much of the collages I saw at How & Nosm’sLate Confessions pop up exhibit back in February.

Collage with Detail, Below

Through Houser’s signature style of visual poetry and personal iconography, the artist extends his practice of self-examination to include the topic of art making itself. Works in this exhibition serve to consider Houser’s relationship to the artwork he creates, the compulsion to create it and how his lifestyle has, consequently, been formed.

Collage Painting with Two Detail Shots Below. As you can see, there is a lot of humor and childlike whimsy in the art.

The way he mixes words with pictures reminds me also of the work of Stephen Powers.

The artist’s collages become visual poems through which he cathartically communicates his most private thoughts and emotions with surprising candor. By cataloging his experiences and feelings through a unique pictorial language, the artist creates his own brand of curative iconography. His aesthetic often mixes stylized figures, hand-drawn typography and geometric shapes, creating quilt-like collages in a cohesive color palette.

Painting with Detail Below

Jim Houser layers acrylic on wood, fabric and found objects, blurring the lines between collage and sculpture. Once combined, it becomes clear that all of his works are associative and directly related. This deceptively dimensional quality is further highlighted when the pieces are assembled into one of the artist’s elaborate installations, adding to the complexity of each individual piece by emphasizing a greater inter-connectivity to the body of work as a whole.

If you’ll be heading over to LeVine to check out Shag’s Thursday’s Girl exhibit anyway, don’t forget to spend some time looking over Jim Houser’s Search Party to see what you might discover!

Search Party By Jim Houser will be on Exhibit through May 4th, 2013 at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, Located at 529 West 20th Street, 9th Floor, in the Chelsea Gallery District.

On Thursday July 28, 2011, The Joshua Liner Gallery will hold a silent art auction / fund raiser, the proceeds of which will benefit its Assistant Director, Tim Strazza, who was recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. To help with Tim’s medical bills, many gallery artists and friends of the gallery have donated artworks, including Shawn Barber, Jeremy Fish, Tat Ito, Chris Mendoza, Ron English, Jim Houser, Swoon, Josh Keyes, Swoon, Sylvia Ji, Oliver Vernon, Sheppard Fairey and many others! The event will take place at the gallery from 7 to 10 PM and will include music, food and drinks. Available artworks can be previewed at This Link.This is a great opportunity for art fans to own pieces by some of the Liner Gallery’s amazing artists at what could well be bargain prices, and to also help out a nice guy in a tough situation. For more information on the event, including absentee bidding, please contact the gallery at 212-244-7415. You can also make a donation by following this link: http://strazzafamily.blogs​pot.com/. No amount is too small – all donations will help and are greatly appreciated.